Sheshbazzar

I mean anything and everything from 'The Gospel Which is According to John' germane to the question of Jesus' age, should appear in this thread.
And NOTHING borrowed from any other religious Book or writing.
The content of other books and writings are excluded when we discuss what "is according to John."

aa5874

Once we use ONLY gJohn then we cannot assume gJohn's Jesus was human.

We MUST examine exactly what is found in the Johanine story and then determine if it supports historical events.

1. John 1.1-3 It is extremely clear that the Johanine LOGOS is claimed to have Existed as a God and Created everything.

It is clear that the Johanine Logos came into existence Before he was manifested in the flesh.

The Johanine Jesus is the Son of a God.

John 3:16 KJV The Johanine claimed he was Before Abraham.

John 8:58 KJV The Johanine Jesus claimed he was God.

John 10:30 KJV The Gospel according to John is NOT history but a Myth Fable of the Son of a God.

The age of the Johanine Jesus is irrelevant or cannot be known.

2-J

Thanks to Joe and others for their contributions in this thread. I was aware of the 'Jesus was 50' thing in Irenaeus but never realised there was the possibility of a similar suggestion in John.

aa5874

The author of Against Heresies could NOT have used gJohn alone to argue that Jesus suffered at about 50 years old because it is not known when the Logos was made flesh.

John 1.14 There is NO "historical" marker in gJohn for the time when the Logos was made flesh which must be known to make a determination of the supposed age of the Logos in the Flesh.

Chili

To explain the concept "Word is made flesh' the alternate option remains wherein 'mind and matter are one' that the Greeks called 'syzen' after becoming 'energetic' as 'energia-in-function' that equals 'to einai'' this time as in 'I Am [fully] that [which] I Am.'

Einai is soul and 'to einai' is to be one with your soul and so no longer have a soul of your own (no plural for einai in Greek), which so then is syzen as Word became flesh.

Tenorikuma

It seems to me that, even if we assume a historical Jesus, we know nothing, nothing about his date of birth or death, and thus about his age.

As far as I can tell, the only "primary sources" from which everything is calculated are the two birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, and death under Pilate in Mark.

The contradictory and historically implausible birth narratives can be safely disregarded as fictitious inventions by their respective authors. So we have no clue when Jesus was born.

Mark was the first to posit a death under Pilate, was he not? Does any early source that had no access to Mark claim the same thing? None that I can think of. The literary nature of the Passion narrative and implausible elements of the trial let us disregard Jesus' death under Pilate as a fictional tale composed by Mark.

So we have nothing.

That's what makes John and Irenaeus interesting, I suppose. They are calculating Jesus' age differently than you would have to if you were going by the timing of Jesus' birth and death in the Synoptics. So either they had other sources lost to us, or they were treating Jesus' age in purely symbolic terms, or they were incompetent.

andrewcriddle

I think it probable that 1 Timothy 6:13 is independent of Mark.

Andrew Criddle

Toto

I thought the Pastorals were considered late, possibly written by the same author or editor who gave us the final version of Luke. This author knew Mark.

Why do you think that the author of 1 Timothy would not have know Mark's gospel?

Gorit Maqueda

I have always thought that 'not yet 50' in GJohn meant 'not yet 50'.

As in 'you cannot retire because you're not yet 65'. The guy may be 30, and may be really tired of working, but he cannot retire yet.

In other words, we cannot deduce anything about GJohn's Jesus's age from that verse, except that he was under 50.

What I have always been looking for is an explanation in terms of '50 was the minimum age you should have to be eligible for the Sanhedrin', or for being considered a sage, or something like that.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

andrewcriddle

I agree that 1 Timothy is post-Pauline, (and later than Mark).

If the author is 'Luke' (ie the author of our Luke-Acts) then he knew Mark. However, I've never found this convincing, (although scholars whom I greatly respect think it very plausible), the author of the pastorals seems to have a more institutionalised view of Christianity with less emphasis on the Holy Spirit than is the case for 'Luke'.

Without associating the author of the Pastorals with 'Luke', there is very little internal evidence that the author of the pastorals knew Mark, (or any other of the canonical Gospels). The intrinsic probability as to whether or not the author knew Mark depends partly on the date of the pastorals. I would date them in the very early 2nd century CE. (The letter of Polycarp clearly makes use of the pastorals.) At this date knowledge of the synoptics should not IMO be assumed without internal evidence. If one dated the pastorals later, eg to the reign of Hadrian, then I agree that the author would have known Mark, (and probably the other synoptics).

Andrew Criddle